


Endless Summer

by Luna



Category: Tennis RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-02
Updated: 2011-01-02
Packaged: 2017-10-14 08:43:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/147449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luna/pseuds/Luna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On Court 18 a match is not won and lost; it is just played out infinitely, deeper and deeper into a fifth and final set as the numbers rack up and the terrain turns uncharted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Endless Summer

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Piru (pyrefly)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyrefly/gifts).



John sweats until he's damn near blind with it, until he's been drenched and dried off fifty times, salt falling into his eyes like snow. Hearing the ball better than he sees it. Holding serve.

He thinks he's been dead for two or three hours.

Afterward, he will learn that some blogger saw this happen, and wrote that both players died. Their lives ended, their souls abandoned the game, and left zombies playing until they rotted down into their tennis shoes. People will forward him this link, thinking it's extremely funny. John will blame it on that sick British sense of humor.

Nothing is funny. Everything outside the match has vanished. There are no spectators, no stands. There are no sounds except the ball hitting and being hit, and the grunts Mahut makes on the other side of the net, in his half of the world.

There may also be an umpire. His existence is impossible to prove, but hard to doubt. A distant God beyond the chalk line, the outer limit of space-time.

John's face is numb. Several fingers on his right hand are numb, too, in their unyielding grip on the handle of the racket. His knees have turned to sludgy cement and there is something dangerous happening low in his stomach, a pain intermittent and sharp. He would not be surprised, not really, if he looked down and saw a stab wound. Blood on his tennis whites. He doesn't look down.

Reporters will play clips for him of this day, and ask what he was thinking in each distinct moment. They will ask Mahut the same question in his language. Both men will answer with the same fumbling syllables, with silences. Neither of them will say, _what the fuck, was I capable of thought?_ John will watch parts of the match with his coaches, too, trying to learn from weak forehands and stutter steps. Every time, his eyes will wander to Mahut's image on the screen. Shambling, surviving. Muscles tensed to the snapping point under very thin skin. John will feel that exhaustion, that burn. He will imagine that Mahut's eyes follow him, too, that they'll study the same frames, their bodies miles apart, yet simultaneously pulled to attention.

On this day, the second day, they are perfectly synchronized. John knows the score the way he knows the theory of gravity: it's useful enough, but it's just an equation to describe a deeper reality. He can't lift a foot from the ground and step into the atmosphere. And Mahut can't break his serve. And he can't break Mahut's. Gravity binds them to the earth. No matter how high the score rises, they remain tied.

His tongue is dry and cured in his mouth. Death is taking him cell by cell, at the roots of his hair, within the linings of his lungs. A point. Another point. John fully believes that he is losing his sight, right up until the moment that the match is, once again, called for darkness.

Called? For something as routine as the setting of the sun?

Yesterday, this was simply a rule. Today, John thinks it is divine intervention.

The sound of his own heartbeat bursts into his ears. He blinks for what must be the first time in hours. and the world arrives again out of the void. Voices, and the faces to go with them. Colors other than white and green. Wimbledon. His arms swing at his sides, nerveless and heavy as stone.

There will be plenty of proof that he speaks to the umpire, to his coach, and to whatever microphone is jammed closest to his face. He will be able to read his own quote in the paper, or pull up video that shows his mouth moving. But he'll have no memory of the words, except for a twinge at one sentence.

"Nothing like this will ever happen again," he says.

 _What I meant,_ he will think, afterward, _is that it would never end._

Evening, impossibly ordinary, fills the sky. John's eyes close. His body walks down the tunnel to the clubhouse. Inside there is artificial light, old fluorescent bars. He can hear their fly-buzz overhead. There is speech in French, English, American. John's people surround him, shoulder to shoulder. Someone takes the racket out of his hand and gives him a towel. Someone covers his mouth with an oxygen mask. John inhales, exhales, inhales, without tasting anything in the filtered air.

He is steered into the shower. They set the water temperature for him with medical precision, keeping it cold to stave off hyperthermia. "Take at least ten minutes," someone says, "and then when we can get you into the hot tub, it'll feel really good."

They are talking to him like a child, or a cancer patient. He doesn't mind. It's the best they can do. He nods and thanks everyone, and finally they leave him, naked and alone.

No. He's not alone.

Very soon after this is over, he will start to know himself again. He'll be exactly what he was before, a big North Carolina boy who thinks hard physical labor is the best fun. He'll have his fling with fame. _Good Morning, America. The Late Show._ First pitch at Yankee Stadium, how cool is that? He'll be slightly prone to tendonitis for the rest of his career, but he'll pass all the MRIs and echocardiograms. And other tests, too. His coach will make him spend hours with a sports shrink; his pastor will pull him aside on a Sunday afternoon. Flying colors.

Only John will know about the permanent damage, the chasm between his memories and the highlight reel, the scar where his mind and body tore apart from one another.

No. Not only John.

His shower curtain is halfway open, and the cold water batters him like tiny hailstones, and he opens his eyes. Mahut is stepping into the shower stall opposite John's. Putting the water on, turning and almost slipping. His hand clutches the edge of his curtain, knuckles swollen and ice-white. He is trembling at his wrists and ankles.

John takes an involuntary step toward him. Mahut doesn't fall.

They smile at each other. This is no social grace, it's a reflex, territorial animals baring their teeth. John plants his feet on cold tile.

"We're still out there," John says. His throat remains dry. "We're at war, you know that."

It isn't a question, but Mahut nods anyway. His face is still dry, but he wipes it with his hand, and says something in French.

 _What did he say?_ John will ask himself. He will not think of it often. He will always wonder.

In the shower room, in no man's land, John drops his chin as Mahut lifts his. Synchronized. Still playing. The same pain twists their faces.

"Tomorrow--" John says, or maybe he says, "Now--"

Mahut lets go of the curtain, squaring his shoulders, his eyes sparking like he knows where the sun goes when it deserts the sky. "Someone has to win," he says. His voice is blurred by accent and falling water, but the words are perfectly clear. A death sentence.

All the muscles from John's right hip to his shoulder blade tighten at the same time. He reaches out, but the net isn't there. He grits his teeth and shifts his weight and has almost righted himself, almost, when Mahut grabs him by the wrist.

John does not feel a pulse, does not hear a breath. This is Limbo. They stumble together, or they collapse, or maybe they walk into each other's arms. Maybe they choose this.

They won't remember.

They don't kiss. Kissing would require intention, would at least require John to bend his knees. Mahut's shower is hotter than his; they move in that direction until they have a wall to lean on. Water sluicing down their backs and arms, hands moving with the water. Thighs against thighs. Mahut ducks his head and bites hell out of John's nipple. John gasps and pulls Mahut's hips up against his. He isn't hard, but stirring, and even that's a surprise. A miracle. Resurrection, John thinks, and laughs, his mouth catching some of Mahut's hair.

Decades afterward, John will have a massive heart attack. His obituary will lead with the Wimbledon story. The accompanying photograph will include both of them, even if one is out of the frame. He'll have three children and a wife, but Mahut's name will come up before anyone mentions them. This will be his piece of history.

Years afterward, John will take a meeting with a filmmaker who wants to show him the whole match, start to finish, and film his reactions. Mahut will already have rejected this offer. John will use him as an excuse to turn it down. He won't have to confess his fear, his bone-deep fear of what he would see if he watched the whole tape. Eleven hours of ghosts.

Six months afterward, they'll get some bullshit award from ESPN, and John will spend most of the evening drinking and being starstruck around Drew Brees, but there will be a moment, at the podium, staring down the cameras, when he will say one true thing: _Nicolas was an absolute warrior, that day_.

Tomorrow, someone has to win.

Today, right now, he opens his right hand and lets the shape of the racket handle go. Touching Mahut's lips, regaining sensation in his fingertips. They hold each other up, sharing their weight. The water soaks through them. They live to fight another day.

**Author's Note:**

> The summary is from Xan Brooks' most excellent liveblog of day two of the Isner-Mahut match.


End file.
